Wireless networks are frequently used in industrial process control systems. For example, a process control system often includes sensors that provide measurements over a wireless network and actuators that receive control signals over the wireless network. A process controller can use the measurements from the sensors to generate the control signals for the actuators.
A wireless network may contain any number of communication paths between different devices in the network. Communication paths may be unidirectional (having one unidirectional connection between devices) or bidirectional (having two unidirectional connections between devices, one in each direction). A user may wish to measure or monitor the quality of individual communication paths within the network. There are several statistics that can be used to measure the quality of a wireless connection, including a Received Signal Quality Indicator (RSQI), a Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI), or a transmit success/fail ratio. Statistics typically apply to a single unidirectional connection.